Blog Archives
What is one of the worst calls you can receive as a mother?
after a few days healing…
Let me put it to you this way, I received one of these calls this week.
“I think you had better come to school. Your boy is in the sick bay. He tripped and fell and we can’t stop the bleeding. He is going to need stitches.”
I replied bravely “oh sherbet – I am on my way.”
I grabbed my bag and dialled my friend because the shakes had already taken over my body. She agreed to collect my daughter from school. Back-up plan organised.
I reversed the car out of the garage and dialled our GP. The sister was expecting our impending arrival.
I then pulled a “Michael Schumacher” and raced to the school.
In your mind you expect the worst. But seeing a bandage wrapped around your child’s head and blood pouring out and down the back of his neck is enough to question if your parenting skills will survive whatever the next hour is about to thrust on you.
I was handed a plastic bag containing his bloodied white shirt. The white lining of his brand new winter jacket was also stained red.
Two of the office ladies, the principal and his teacher were all there. All I could note was the gloves and the blood.
Panic.
*No you can’t panic. Remain calm – control the shakes – and get going.*
Like I said to the sister; “if I had it in me to deal with blood and guts – I would have been a vet – I can’t – so I went into Animal Welfare”
“Those who can’t do – teach.” – and all…
Anyhow, the sister notes that this was the fastest emergency call to arrival they have ever had and she assesses the wound. Blood is still squirting out like a broken tap and every time she raises her hand I see more blood on the gauze and ice pack.
She motions to the other sister in the waiting room “Are one of the doctors available yet?”
“They are all still in with patients.”
“I’ll just keep applying pressure then.” She takes a peek and “Oops we still have a little bleeder here.”
All this doesn’t leave much in the confidence department for a stressing mother, who has already used her asthma pump to control her breathing.
I noticed that My Boy had a red mark on his cheek, but he was incredibly pale. I decided to try and find out exactly what had happened, but all he could remember was standing up to get something and hitting his head on a chair.
I turned and saw that one of the doctors had finished with his previous patient and was on his way to the bed.
It then crossed my mind that way back when I was thirteen I was bitten by a dog and I was really brave being stitched up and having surgery on my gaping wound in a GP’s office. I thought “just be brave enough for the both of you.”
I turned again and hubby had arrived. Thinking about it now; I must have sounded highly panicked on the phone, because I only called him when I got out of the car rushing into the doctors’ rooms.
The doctor took a look, and injected lovely yellow muthi into My Boys head. *HMPF I really do not like needles – even less so when they are being poked into my child’s head.*
Three stitches later and I braved up enough to look at the wound. As I walked closer I noticed the then partially dry blood caked in My Boys hair. I breathed a little sigh of relief that the bleeding had stopped. My tension remained until later that evening when I eventually could process the day’s trauma.
The doctor explained that the cut wasn’t wide – it was rather deep though, so he had to insert deep stitches to close up the capillary that had been ruptured.
After listening to the details of wound care and what symptoms I should look out for we left.
My friend’s children said that there were three cleaners at My Boys class mopping and scrubbing up blood. This I can fully relate to after soaking and washing his shirt and jacket. The smell of blood was overpowering and left me nauseous for the remainder of the afternoon.
Here I am now thinking of how grateful I am that this is over.
My Boy is sore but safe. All we need now for is healing to continue.
What really happened? My Boy got up from his desk to get something, tripped over another child’s concertina folder, slipped, fell and hit his head on a chair.
OK so now I want to hear from you. Are you good with medical emergencies? How do you keep calm and make sure that your child is okay?
Maybe you would also like to read:
IT
Or
Please, be kind and DON’T COPY AND PASTE THIS ARTICLE. rather share this post from one of the links below, or simply give me a thumbs up and like this post or the Di Doodles Facebook Page.
You can follow me on Twitter or Pinterest
Pop by News24 Voices and read my featured articles.
Last but not least you can check the box below and have up coming posts delivered to your email.
AND THANK YOU for stopping by!!
Peanut Butter Sandwiches
The joys of having both my children in the same school. 😉 :
Fairy marches out of school on Wednesday, angry face with a glint in her eye of wanting to smile.
My friend: “oh, someone’s cross…
Fairy, what’s wrong?”
Fairy, as she slaps her brother: “HEEE stole my peanut butter sandwich!”
And she marches off to the car.
Well, you know those moments when you just can’t help but laugh and try to hide it, tears rolling, snorting unable to speak. This was it.
Why she moaned about the peanut butter sandwich I will never know.
She doesn’t like the peanut butter I buy, and her brother can and will lick the stuff out the tub. He could eat peanut butter for three meals a day and be quite satisfied.
Its like last year at school when she refused to eat her lunch. She told her teacher that she didn’t have any, or purposely left her lunch at home, just so that she could go up to the office to get a PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICH!
Yes, I have swapped from smooth to crunchy peanut butter, brown bread, to “best of both” or white… She complains bitterly about the stuff I buy and then does this?
I mean honestly, if fairy had a choice between peanut butter and a carrot, she would take the carrot.
Poor old brother just replies and says: “but I left you the chocolate spread one!”
Chocolate spread which she LOVES!
I suppose this is just one of those things that I am not meant to understand.
Homework has doubled up too.
You really know this when you help your kids with homework and they start to play one potato, two potato with magazines of pictures to be cut out.
Maths – Maths… That’s the time when you get so confused as to who you’re helping you start to give the answers to the wrong child.
“Uh, mom. 2 x 4 is not the cube root of a hundred and plenty”
I am recapping studies I thought I could have forgotten and left behind me, in the jail cells called high school.
And I thought this was going to be sooooo easy. Two kids, one school, one pick up time, dad drops them off at school.
Yeah right.
Its early days yet and they have been entertaining to say the least.
If you enjoyed this article you may also enjoy:
Or
Please, be kind and DON’T COPY AND PASTE THIS ARTICLE. rather share this post from one of the links below, or simply give me a thumbs up and like this post or the Di Doodles Facebook Page, follow me on Twitter or Pinterest or add your email address above or check the box below and have up coming posts delivered to your email.
AND THANK YOU for stopping by!!
Middle Grandchild Syndrome – Triggers Four
Its funny how when you’re feeling completely uninspired to write that someone else’s story triggers you enough to kick your butt into telling a bit more of my story.
If you’ve followed my posts you will know that I have worked through various difficult patches to come out to the point where I am now.
Which is… *smiles*
The place where what I do in my life is not because someone else told me to or because I am making someone else proud. I am doing what makes me happy, making myself proud of what I do and who I am.
I am the first to say that children learn by example so I have to live what I am hoping to teach them – right?
Any way, so what brought me to write about my past now – in this post? Well, these are the things that aided my decisions and made me who I am today. if telling people about my life encourages them to make their lives better my goal is being accomplished.
So I read the MOMfession by Tracy Winslow (Momaical Mom) on Mummy Mishy’s They call me mummy blog. and it made me want to tell you why I always felt second best, or should I say third best and one of the reasons I felt I needed to “people please”.
From when I was a little girl I always heard about how wonderful my cousin was. If it wasn’t that it was my young brother who was excelling. You know when they talk about middle child syndrome, well this is a large dose of middle grand child syndrome.
While my cousin and brother excelled in sports; I didn’t. My family held an intervention when I was 10 or 11 because I wasn’t athletic enough.
Now I think, so what! I was active, I rode my bike, I skipped, I swam, I played with the dog. I was never a couch potato and the mom in me now is screaming out because there was never a cause for concern! If I was my child I would have encouraged my real talents and the skipping, bike riding, dog playing. Yes, they aren’t olympic sports but being active and enjoying it is what mattered!
I mean honestly, I am artistic, I find comfort and extreme enjoyment from being creative. I LOVED to dance! Why not just encourage that?!
Ok, so the result of the intervention was my, oh so wonderful cousin trained me to run the school cross country. I literally ran my buns off and HATED every single step I took in those hideously uncomfortable short shorts.
I ran the race and improved drastically. I came in 14th and not my usual 109th. I won a trophy for the most improved runner.
Who was there to congratulate me?
Any of the family who had forced me to run the race? NOPE
I gave up after that.
I did try sports and eventually did get to dance which blew my mind with the pure freedom and beauty of it. But I never had the support team that my cousin and brother had. So it was all short lived.
It didn’t help that when my cousin got married my brother, the overseas cousin and new in laws cousins were included, but not me.
My cousin bonded with my brother going to sports matches, but not me.
She phoned me at work once, said we should meet for coffee because I was “grown up” now. But nothing materialised.
When My gramps died, everyone spoke about my wonderful cousin and how she was there when he passed. But nothing about me who was always there day in – day out; year in – year out.
I feel that although I tried for so long just to be noticed – I never really did. Not for being me.
Who am I – I am a person who is creative, I love anything that exhibits freedom of expression. I take pride in what I do, I take pride in knowing that I do right by my children. I praise them for their good points and I won’t push them to do things that they aren’t happy doing. Ok STOP THE BUS! I encourage them with school work and – YUCK! – who wants to do that?
But most of all, I am proud that I am living out my dream of helping animals! I am proud that I have the courage to tell my story, knowing that it may help someone else! I am strong! I am soft! I am beautiful. I am ME
If I could say one thing to Tracy this would be it.
Flowers for you Tracy and for me as we celebrate the people we are!
What is important here is rising above what gets us down, holding our heads up high and being our unique selves. Because we are UNIQUE!
If you would like to read previous posts in my “triggers” series here they are:
Triggers 3 – History Revisited
Please, be kind and DON’T COPY AND PASTE THIS ARTICLE. rather share this post from one of the links below, or simply give me a thumbs up and like this post or the Di Doodles Facebook Page or add your email address above or check the box below and have up coming posts delivered to your email.
AND THANK YOU for stopping by!!
Bullying
This was the TOP post on my blogger blog.
I’ll be moving over posts that I feel are valid, from time to time.
As we all know Bullying doesn’t just happen to Children but to people of all ages, sexes, creeds, and beliefs.
This post is purely about children.
If your child is being bullied, go into the school.
Phoning is no good.
I had an incident this year when a bully decided to apply his handy work in front of me.
I made it abundantly clear that he was NEVER to go near my child again and that I would be going in to the school to complain, which I did.
The situation has certainly improved.
In the bully’s defence, it is always best to speak to the school as there is a high chance that there are deeper reasons behind what they are doing.
Here is some further research I collected with the help of Soooz.
Remember its a past article and I have not changed the time frame
Bullying
As a mother of a child experiencing bullying at school I think it is vitally important that parents are aware of the signs that a child is being bullied, as well as how to prevent it and what to do if it happening to your child.
This is what I have experienced and information that I have found to be very helpful.
When I first heard that my son was being bullied at school I was horrified. It took me back to the days when I experienced bullies while I was still at school.
Bullies made my school life really difficult. There were days that I didn’t want to go to school, just so I could avoid having to deal with the children who were harassing me.
I was verbally bullied, bullied by being excluded, as well as being threatened.
Having a difficult home life, I never had the coping mechanisms instilled in me, to deal with bullies and I crept further into my shell. Years later I found my strength and I will no longer allow myself to be in that situation again. There is no way that I will allow it to be a factor in my children’s lives.
My son’s experiences have been different.
The latest bully has been picking on him in the classroom as well as seeking him out at break time to continue harassing him.
The bully:
- · harasses him on his way to his desk,
· steals his stationery and refuses to return it,
· hits him with rulers and other objects,
· pushes him around, (on one occasion into the hook for the classroom door)
· slaps and punches him,
· tells my son that he can’t do things – that he has already cleared with teachers,
· laughs at my son for no reason,
· resorts to name calling,
· he lies when he is confronted,
I realised that this is typical behaviour for a bully when I read an article forwarded to me by a friend.
So as not to repeat any of the information here is a link to the page. It describes types of bullying, why students bully and the impact of bullying.
Bullying How To Deal – via Soooz’s Blog
The Result:
I had a meeting this morning at my son’s school. The class teacher is at her wits end with the bully. The Head of Department for grade 4 and the Principal are all dealing with the issue at hand. The parents of the bully have been contacted.
I have ensured that they have all the info that I could possibly give them, so that they could deal with each problem area effectively.

I now hope that the bully’s parents take action and work with the school. I am taking my zero tolerance approach, and I hope that you would do the same for your child.
My tips would be that you always speak to your child. Have an open line of communication.
My son and I have our time in the kitchen every evening. He has a passion for food so while we are cooking together he talks about his day. It’s a relaxed atmosphere so it is easy for him to talk about anything that is bothering him.
Go with your gut. If you feel that something is not right – it probably isn’t.
You’ll know when to push your child for answers.
Don’t leave the situation at educating your child on how to react.
Always take things further.
Go to the school prepared. (In my meeting today I was able to enlighten the teacher as to problem areas that had not been addressed)
You can’t be sure of what will happen in the future, but making sure that everyone is aware of the issue at hand is a vital step.
Ensure that you and the class teacher have a clear plan of action and ask the teacher to explain this plan to your child as well as you explaining it to him or her. It leaves your child with peace of mind.
One tip from the articles I read that resonated with me was not to allow a meeting with both children in the room. I had been down that road before – and the outcome was not what I wanted or expected.
Thank you to Soooz for all the information.
I learned earlier this year, that it helps to share your story with others. Your story may just help someone else who is in the same situation. I will post updates of any new developments…
End
Feel free to post your story in the comments. ↓↓ if it is a past issue tell us how the problem was solved and if its current maybe those commenting can help with a solution.
Will you share this post? ↓↓ *Thank you*
8ight 